1. GRIT by Angela Duckworth
Grit describes what creates outstanding achievements, based on science, interviews with high achievers from various fields and the personal history of success of the author, Angela Duckworth, uncovering that achievement isn’t reserved for the talented only, but for those with passion and perseverance. The author shares her research and the work of others on the subject and explains that what we eventually accomplish depends more on our passion and perseverance than on our innate talent.
“Our potential is one thing, what we do with it is quite another” – Angela Duckworth
2. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
The meaning of life is to make life meaningful. Since meaning varies from day to day and hour to hour, it’s up to you and me to constantly search for meaning in our lives and generate a feeling of meaning. This takes work but if we succeed, we activate the single greatest source of productive energy human beings possess; If we fail, however, we’ll slowly fall into darkness and lose the will to live. Man’s Search for Meaning details holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s horrifying experiences in Nazi concentration camps, along with his psychological approach of logotherapy, which is also what helped him survive and shows you how you can – and must – find meaning in your life.
The three lessons from world-famous 1946 book, Man’s Search for Meaning:
- Sometimes the only way to survive is to surrender to death.
- Your life has its own meaning and it’s up to you to find it in any given moment.
- Use paradoxical intention to make your fears go away.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves” ― Viktor E. Frankl
3. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell’s
Outliers explains why “the self-made man” is a myth and what truly lies behind the success of the best people in their field, which is often a series of lucky events, rare opportunities and other external factors, which are out of our control.
Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”-the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He says that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
“Who we are cannot be separated from where we are from” – Malcolm Gladwell
4. Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens is your guide to becoming an expert on the entire history of the human race as it reviews everything our species has been through from ancient ancestors to our dominating place in the world today.
Human history has been shaped by three major revolutions: the Cognitive Revolution (70,000 years ago), the Agricultural Revolution (10,000 years ago), and the Scientific Revolution (500 years ago). These revolutions have empowered humans to do something no other form of life has done, which is to create and connect around ideas that do not physically exist (think religion, capitalism, and politics). These shared “myths” have enabled humans to take over the globe and have put humankind on the verge of overcoming the forces of natural selection.
“History is something that very few people have been doing while everynone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets” – Yuval Noah Harari
5. The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life by Leo Babauta
The Power Of Less shows you how to align your life with your most important goals, by finding out what’s really essential, changing your habits one at a time and working focused and productively on only those projects that will lead you to where you really want to go.
Leo Babauta proposes a way to make it simple. Make lists of the most important things, Cut down to the essential, Commit to doing them in simple steps and Be consistent
He emphasizes the importance of focus. By eliminating distractions and sticking to the main task, you achieve more than when you try to do a million things at once. He also advocates for simplifying goals, tasks, and assignments into bite-sized tasks. This makes everything less insurmountable. Consistency is a crucial element in applying the principles in The Power of Less.
“Instead of focusing on how much you can accomplish, focus on how much you can absolutely love what you’re doing” – Leo Babauta
6. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counter-intuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson
The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck does away with the positive psychology craze to instead give you a Stoic. Finding something important and meaningful in your life is the most productive use of your time and energy.
Sometimes life just really sucks and we cannot run away from it. We need to learn how to let go in order to enjoy life more. The key to living a good life is not giving a fuck about more things but rather focus only on the things that align with your personal values. A no-bullshit approach to living a life that might not always be happy, but meaningful and centered only around what’s important to you.
“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for” – Mark Manson
7. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
When Breath Becomes Air helps you see what’s important by diving into Paul Kalanithi’s life of loving neuroscience, literature, meaning, and his family that ended from cancer in his mid-thirties.
The memoir of Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University, who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in his mid-thirties. Kalanithi uses the pages in this book to not only tell his story, but also share his ideas on how to approach death with grace and what it means to be fully alive.
“There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of the gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment” – Paul Kalanithi
8. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters
Zero to One is entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s unconventional advice for technology startups. It’s about creating new things and also about creating a better future. Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook, argues that technology has stagnated. Most new companies improve incrementally on existing products. They move the world from 1 to 0.
But there’s much more to discover. The most valuable and game-changing startups create something new. They move the world from 0 to 1. Creating new things is not only the best path to economic profits—it’s the only path for human progress.
“Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius” – Peter Thiel
